


In Broad Daylight

by Setcheti



Series: Tremors: the Subtext [11]
Category: Tremors: The Series
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 23:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setcheti/pseuds/Setcheti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Burt and Tyler are still on night patrol, and the Something finally makes its move.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Two days after the first – and only – sighting of the flying monster, Burt and Tyler were back on night patrol. They went out every evening just as dusk was falling and didn’t come back to town until dawn, then spent a little while hanging around the store drinking black coffee and waiting for reports of downed stock to come in before heading back to Burt’s to get some sleep, leaving Larry to watch things around town for them until they came back late in the afternoon to start the whole process over again.

And they still weren’t finding anything – except more bloody signs of feeding flying monsters and more cameras recording night-running jackrabbits out on the valley floor. One of the jackrabbits had a long, lizard-like tail; Casey and Roger had chased around trying to find that one for two days before turning up a small family of what Jodi called iguana bunnies that were one, carnivorous and two, thankfully not doing very well. Luckily for Perfection, most mammalian-mix mutations didn’t do too well or last too long.

Except of course for the flying monsters, which didn’t seem to be doing all that badly. Burt had been staring blindly at the seismo-monitor that kept track of El Blanco’s whereabouts when he made that observation, one of his hands rubbing Tyler’s back where the younger man sat slumped over beside him. “Everything else either dies or has the common decency to get out where we can kill it,” the survivalist told no one in particular. “These things…I think they’re mocking me.”

“You got no argument from me.” Tyler didn’t even raise his head from where it was pillowed on his folded arms. He’d long since given up on drinking more coffee. “I think they’re laughin’ at us. Scratchin’ up rocks…what kind of animal scratches up a rock like that?”

“One that’s sharpening its claws.” Burt blinked and rubbed his eyes, checked his watch. “We’ll give everyone half an hour more to call in…”

“No, you won’t. Go home.” Nancy just couldn’t watch any more. Tyler was falling asleep where he was sitting and Burt was running almost entirely on autopilot. “Go _home_ , Burt,” she repeated. “If anyone calls something in, Jodi and I will handle them. You two go get some sleep.”

Burt blinked at her, looking for all the world like he didn’t understand what she was saying. The words he finally found to answer her confirmed it. “We have another half hour…”

“Another half hour and Tyler will be too sound asleep to wake up and you’ll probably fall asleep right on top of him.” Nancy stood up, shaking her head. “You know, I don’t even think you’re safe to drive back home, you’d probably end up asleep in the truck, crash into a rock and get eaten by an iguana bunny. I’ll get Larry to drive you back.”

Another blink. “Larry has to watch the town. And I might need my vehicle…”

“I think we can handle things in town for a little while,” she cut him off, trying not to smile; he’d almost been whining when he mentioned the truck, something she didn’t often get to see Burt do. Jodi was already at the radio, calling for Perfection’s daytime defender to come take the night shift home. “And Larry can drive your vehicle with you in it, so you’ll still have it with you in case you need it.”

Burt couldn’t seem to think of anything else to say; Nancy suspected that autopilot would only stretch so far, even for him. “Oh,” was what came out, and then he turned back to Tyler and started shaking him awake. “Tyler, come on, we’re going home.”

“Home?” That got the younger man’s head up. Tyler ran a hand through his disordered hair and yawned. “It’s been half an hour already?”

“Yes, it has,” Nancy jumped in before Burt could say anything, and almost laughed when the survivalist frowned and blinked blearily at his watch to check. “Come on, you two get in the truck and then Larry will drive you home.”

This time it was Tyler who frowned. “I can drive…” He stood up, lost his balance and sat back down on the stool again rubbing his eyes. “Just gotta get halfway awake…”

“You can do that after you sleep for a few hours.” Nancy pulled him back up off the stool and then started moving he and Burt toward the door. Larry was headed toward them from across the street with his gun on its strap slung over his shoulder and his usual morning bounce already firmly in effect, but when he got nearer the sculptor could see that he looked worried. “They’re just tired,” she reassured him when he got close enough. “I didn’t think either one of them was fit to drive.”

“Yeah, Jodi told me. I’ll get them home.” Larry suited action to the words, taking Tyler’s arm and steering him away from the driver’s side of the truck. “No, you get in the back,” he told the taller man when Tyler tried to resist him. “You sit with Burt so he doesn’t fall out.”

Some of that must have penetrated, because Burt’s spine straightened. “I would not…”

“And you’re going to make sure Tyler doesn’t fall out,” Nancy cut him off. “He’s so tired he can barely stand up straight. Now climb in, we’ll see the two of you this afternoon, all right?”

Burt blinked down at her. “You’ll call if anything happens?”

“Only if it’s too important to wait. Little things we can deal with on our own.” She patted his arm. “Go on, you don’t want to fall asleep in the back of the truck.”

“No, that I don’t.” He grasped her arm briefly and then climbed up into the truck bed, handing over his keys to Larry with a yawn of his own. “We’ll see you this afternoon.”

Nancy waved when they drove away, and then went back into the store. Larry would get them home and see that they made it into bed, and maybe tonight she could convince them not to go out on patrol. She took the stool that Tyler had been sitting on with a sigh. “There has to be a better way to catch these things, there just has to.”

“No one’s been able to think of one yet, and it’s been almost two weeks.” Jodi leaned on the counter with a sigh of her own. “And if anyone were going to come up with something that would work, I think Burt would be the one.”

“Burt is so exhausted right now that he barely responds to his own name, and Tyler’s no better,” Nancy snorted. “Twitchell is due back out here in a couple of days, maybe he’ll have some suggestions.”

“That Burt will actually go along with? That I have to see.” Jodi handed Nancy a fresh cup of Grabbuccino and got one for herself. “I’m just glad no calls came in while he and Tyler were in here, you’d have never gotten them to go home.”

“I know.” They sat talking about it for about ten minutes more, not coming to any conclusions, and then the sound of a vehicle pulling up outside interrupted them. Nancy didn’t even have to look. “Rosalita?”

“Yep.” Jodi started getting another cup of Grabbuccino, and she was setting it on the counter when the other woman walked in. “Morning, Rosalita.”

“Not a good one. Those…those things, one of them was there this morning.”

Nancy almost dropped her own cup. “You mean you _saw_ …”

“It flew away. It was attacking a rock, I don’t know how something so stupid it would attack a rock has managed to stay alive this long without getting caught.” Rosalita looked around the store and frowned. “I thought Burt and Tyler would still be here.”

“I sent them home,” Nancy told her. “They were both falling asleep sitting up, they couldn’t have taken on an iguana bunny.” Then her eyes widened. “Wait, you saw this thing this _morning_? In the daylight?”

Rosalita rolled her eyes. “It would have been kind of hard to see it in the dark – and I wouldn’t have gone out in the dark, anyway. That’s why I came right in, I thought Burt said this flying thing only came out at night.”

“We all thought that – Casey said they were nocturnal.” Nancy’s mind was racing. This was definitely important, but she wasn’t going to wake Burt up if the thing was already gone. “It flew away?”

“Sort of.” Rosalita plopped down on a stool. “I leaned on my horn and startled it and it sort of fell down, then it flopped around, got back up, tried to grab the rock again and took off.” She shrugged. “Once it got up high I drove out of there, I was afraid it might turn around.”

“It might have.” Nancy was thinking hard. This was important, but the flying thing wasn’t there any more. And she hadn’t been kidding about the iguana bunny – at this point, she doubted that Burt and Tyler were even up to hunting a Wormhopper. “Okay, it’s not there anymore and you didn’t see which way it went, so I think it can wait until this afternoon.”

Jodi didn’t look so sure. “But Nancy, this morning Tyler mentioned scratched up rocks, remember?”

That was true, but the sculptor dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “Only because it was something they hadn’t seen before.” Suddenly her eyes widened. “Wait a minute, _Larry_! He’ll be walking back to town from Burt’s, and that thing was out…”

“I’ll get him.” Rosalita was already up and running for the door, calling back over her shoulder, “I’ve seen that thing, his little gun won’t even slow it down!”

Nancy and Jodi just stared after her, and then when the truck roared away from the store and flew up the road that led to Burt’s they looked at each other and smiled. Maybe something good was coming out of this already.

 

Rosalita was driving fast and keeping an eye on the sky and on the rocks, her difficulties with the man she was looking for all but forgotten in her urgency to get to him before something else did. They’d known the flying monsters were big, but they hadn’t known _how_ big, or how fast they could move. Larry wouldn’t stand a chance. She finally spotted him and braked to a skidding stop, kicking up gravel that he flinched away from. “Get in!” she yelled out the rolled-down window. “Those things, they come out during the day!”

Larry might have still been uncomfortable around Rosalita, but he wasn’t stupid and Burt had made sure he knew the limitations of his weapon. He was in the truck in a heartbeat. “You saw one?”

“On my ranch this morning, in broad daylight. We’ll go wake up Burt…”

“No.” The refusal startled her, and she missed the gear she was trying to shift the truck into. Larry was shaking his head. “No, you can’t – not unless that thing is in town right now. We _can’t_ wake them up.”

She looked at him, hard. He didn’t even flinch. “Why not?”

Larry made a face. “You weren’t there when I took them home – Burt let me _drive his truck_ , Rosalita. And I had to take their boots off before I left, and lock the door. They both just fell onto the bed and they were out like a light.” He sat back against the seat with a sigh. “I turned off Burt’s radio. They’ll be going out again tonight, they need to sleep.”

His expression wasn’t just worried, it was…resigned? It suddenly struck Rosalita that Larry didn’t expect her to listen to him, he expected her to drive up to Burt’s anyway. She put the truck back in gear, drove a little ways up the road and then turned around and headed back to town. “You’re right,” she told him. “They do need to sleep. And I don’t even know which way that thing went, I was too scared to follow it.”

He hesitated, then…“If my gun wouldn’t stop it, your shotgun wouldn’t either.” He turned his head and looked at her. “Burt will say you did the right thing.”

She glanced over at him, still keeping an eye on the air, the road, the rocks. “He’s going to be mad that we didn’t wake him up.”

Larry shrugged and gave her a half-grin. “I’d rather him be mad than dead. Tyler too.”

Rosalita grinned back. “Keep an eye on the sky,” she ordered. “Maybe we’ll see that thing and we can run it over with the truck or something.”

“I’d rather run it over with Burt’s truck.” But he cranked down his own window and leaned his head out so he had a better view. “Burt has a really great truck.”

“Yeah, he does. I wish he’d let me drive it.” Rosalita kept her smile as she watched the road. She’d spotted the monster, it hadn’t eaten any of her cattle, and she and Larry were actually talking. It was turning out to be a good day.


	2. Chapter 2

There were no more sightings of the flying monsters that day, and once Burt and Tyler woke up and came back into town they were surprisingly laid-back about not having been told. They were worried about the rock-scratching, though. “Now that I’m awake enough to think about it,” Burt told everyone, grimacing at the admission of weakness, “that sort of behavior in an animal usually indicates that the animal is sick.”

“It could be rabid,” Tyler put in, nodding. “Or sick because it’s not put together right to survive.”

“So we could be lucking out.” Larry was back to bouncing now that he knew the two men weren’t angry at him. “It could be dying off.”

“I’d like that a lot,” came from Rosalita. “That thing has lived too long as it is.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Burt cautioned. He took another drink of his coffee and shook his head. “I’d like to think this thing is becoming extinct as much as anyone, but we can’t afford to let our guard down now. And you’re all forgetting,” he traded a look with Tyler, “that there might be more than one. The one Rosalita saw today could very well be dying off, but the other ones might not be so lucky – lucky for us, that is.”

“So now we’ve got a _sick_ man-eating monster running around the valley, great.” Nancy leaned forward, looking worried. “You don’t think it’s rabid, do you?”

“It’s possible. Or it might just be fallin’ apart, kind of like the iguana bunnies and the Wormhoppers.” Tyler shrugged. “Don’t really matter much, if one of those things gets hold of one of us we won’t have time to worry about rabies.”

 

“Unfortunately true.” Burt drained his cup and let Jody take it from him to refill it; in spite of half a day of sleep he still looked desperately tired, as did Tyler. “But we might have a better chance of killing the sick one, especially if it’s out in broad daylight attacking rocks.”

Nancy perked up at that comment. “Does that mean no more night patrols?”

The survivalist sighed, and Tyler drowned what might have been a chuckle in his own coffee. “Yes, for the time being it means no more night patrols,” Burt capitulated. He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Happy now?”

“I’ll be happy tomorrow, once I’m sure the two of you got a good night’s sleep,” she told him pointedly, arching an eyebrow of her own. “You _are_ going back to the bunker tonight, aren’t you?”

Burt tried to glare at her, but the look didn’t last. He sighed again. “Yes, we are. We’ve agreed that we’re…both just too damned tired to be any good to anyone right now.”

Nancy just smiled, knowing what that admission had cost him – and knowing that it was mostly because of Tyler that he’d made it. She’d been noticing lately that Burt seemed to be less prone to macho posturing than he had been before, it was like having Tyler had suddenly left the survivalist with nothing to prove. Or maybe with everything to lose, but Nancy didn’t want to think about that. She was just glad that at least one monster was now showing up during daylight hours, even if that did mean they would all have to be a little more careful for a while. And speaking of careful…she snagged the phone off its shelf and plopped it down on the counter. “Who wants to give Twitchell the good news?” she asked.

 

The next day began uneventfully – which should have been a warning sign to everyone. Remains of another sheep had been found, but after going around to the attack site for a cursory examination Burt and Tyler had come back with the news that they now had proof there was more than one monster; there had been no scratched-up rocks anywhere around the remains, or even anywhere on the ranch in question. The really unfortunate conclusion that came with that discovery, though, was that the sick monster seemed to be hanging around near the town, most likely looking for easier prey than a temperamental longhorn steer. With that in mind, Burt terminated Larry’s foot patrol and set him instead to guarding the comings and goings at Jodi’s store while he and Tyler started to make a cautious, ever-widening search outwards from that same location.

They found nothing, except more scratched rocks, and headed back to town in the middle of the afternoon to rethink their strategy and check out a rattle in Burt’s engine. The rattle turned out to be a small rock caught up in the fan blades, so the two men decided to continue rethinking in the store under the weak comfort of Jodi’s air conditioner.

The flying thing attacked them before they’d gone halfway across the street.

It swooped over the top of the garage in a swift, deadly arc, and all Larry’s sudden shout of warning managed to do was give the two startled men time to spin around and see death coming for them. It was on them in seconds, but Tyler still somehow managed to shove Burt out of the way and try to duck the swoop himself.

He failed. One set of talons hooked his shoulder and the massive ragged wings swept down powerfully to create the updraft needed to yank him off the ground. Tyler screamed, trying to fight off the other set of talons that were trying to secure a hold of their own on him. His struggles, fortunately, prevented the monster from gaining too much altitude…but those struggles were weakening as they also served to cause more damage to his trapped shoulder.

Larry had run halfway out in the street with his gun, but although he had it held at the ready he wasn’t shooting and when Jodi ran up and tried to take it from him he yanked it back. “I don’t have a clear shot!” he yelled, not just to her but to Burt. “If I fire now, I’ll cut Tyler in half!”

Burt didn’t appear to have heard him, all his attention fixed on the battle going on practically right over his head. His own sidearm was out, but the two shots he’d fired from it into the monster’s body had had no visible effect on the thing at all and the target areas he needed to hit were too close to Tyler to risk. He kept trying, though, frantically looking for a clear shot through the dust whipped up by the thing’s powerful wings as his lover’s struggles grew weaker and weaker and the monster began to gain altitude again.

He had almost decided to risk hitting Tyler rather than let him be killed by the flying thing when there was a rumble and the ground exploded straight upward in a deadly fountain of roaring Graboid. Burt had only seen it happen like that one time before, the time El Blanco had tried to eat the 4-12 monster old Cletus had been keeping out at his shack. This time was much more spectacular. El Blanco’s tentacles had latched onto the flying creature’s wings and wrapped around one of its legs; he was quite obviously trying to eat the thing, the thing just wasn’t cooperating with him. The little tentacle mouths were ripping at the wings, shredding them from the bottom up as they tore and grabbed and tore and grabbed...the creature lost a little altitude, the other leg was grabbed and the flying creature’s hooked beak snapped at the air in rage and pain. It was slowly being reeled in…

Too slowly. Tyler lay where he’d fallen when the thing had thrown him off, an unmoving heap on the sand, and Burt was frantic to get to him, but the two monsters were struggling between them. He couldn’t even get close, with the flying thing’s taloned limbs flailing around like they were and El Blanco’s tentacles waving all over the place snapping their little hook mouths hungrily. The flying thing screamed, a sound like a buzz saw underwater, and then again…

…And then El Blanco sucked it down and dropped back into his hole. Burt barely registered the rumbles that indicated the Graboid was moving away before he raced to Tyler’s side and dropped to his knees there in the sand, assessing without touching, relieved almost past rationality that his lover was still breathing. Someone had to have already called for help, Burt knew, so he just sat there in the dirt with one hand barely touching Tyler’s hair, watching each shallow breath whistle in and out, in and out.

 

The next day, Burt was still watching – just this time, he was watching in the hospital in Bixby. People with double concussions had to be watched in the hospital; so did people with a dislocated hip and shoulder, talon-puncture wounds and cracked ribs. Tyler wasn’t in a coma, thank God, but he still hadn’t regained consciousness and the doctor didn’t know when he would. Burt had privately decided that he wasn’t leaving the room until it happened.

He had yet to spare a thought for why the nurses weren’t pressuring him to comply with visiting hours; all the reasons why he needed to stay with Tyler seemed so obvious to him that in his shocked state he just assumed everyone else could see the rightness of it too. What he didn’t know was that Nancy had had a word with the doctor, whom she happened to know, and who had subsequently written up his orders with several things in mind that he otherwise wouldn’t have been thinking of. Twitchell had had words with someone too, but in his case it was the hospital administrator and the orders had nominally come from the Department of the Interior; their conversation had been all about discrimination, confidentiality and national security. Which was why the media hadn’t been in the hospital to bother Burt either, something he also hadn’t noticed.

All Burt had noticed was that Tyler was still breathing. He was going to be in a lot of pain when he woke up, his recovery was going to be long and slow…but he was still alive. The flying monster hadn’t been able to add Tyler’s name to Burt’s highlighted list.

Thanks to El Blanco.

That was one thing other than Tyler that had been on the survivalist’s mind. He’d thought back over all the encounters with the Graboid that they’d had and things had started to add up – what they were adding up to he still couldn’t say, but they were adding up. El Blanco and 4-12. El Blanco and the assassins from Vegas. And now El Blanco and the flying thing. They all had one factor in common: Tyler. This time it had been unarguably clear that the Graboid had been deliberately protecting him, because Burt had seen with his own eyes the little hook-tentacle that had caught Tyler’s arm as he was tossed off by the flying thing and somewhat eased his hard descent to the ground. Tyler had a bruise ringing his arm from that grip, as a matter of fact, proof that Burt hadn’t been mistaken about what had happened.

Especially since the bruise was just a bruise, showing no punctures from little hook-teeth; El Blanco had kept his mouth shut, so to speak. But grateful as Burt was, he still wished he knew _why_.

He wasn’t the only one. Nancy came in later that afternoon. She’d actually been in and out several times, but Burt had barely noticed her except to automatically thank her when she handed him coffee. This time she pulled up a chair and dropped into it, then reached over and shook him until he looked at her. “Burt, he’s going to be fine.”

He frowned at her. “I know that.” His gaze started to drift back to Tyler again. “I’m just…”

“Waiting for him to wake up, I know.” Nancy shook him again to regain his attention. “Focus on _me_ , Burt,” she ordered. “We have to talk about what happened. You said El Blanco attacked the creature and ate it, which is what Larry and Jodi saw too. But Casey finished checking the site and she says the creature _never touched the ground_.” The hand still gripping his arm squeezed. “Burt, how did El Blanco know it was there?”

“I don’t know.” Burt blinked at her, then blinked again and raised a hand to rub his eyes – the hand not attached to the arm she was still holding. He gestured blindly at the hospital bed. “His arm…El Blanco grabbed his arm. I think he was trying to save Tyler.” When he looked at her again his gaze was sharper and somewhat more alert. “I’ve been sitting here thinking about it…Nancy, I don’t think it’s the first time. But I don’t understand it.”

“I think I might.” The sculptor let go of him and settled back in her own chair again, her frown drawing a fine line between her eyebrows. “Burt, Rosalita told me about something…odd she saw Tyler do one day out at the lab; he told she and Harlow that you were coming down the road, but even the dust from your truck wasn’t visible to either of them for almost five minutes. Have you ever noticed him doing things like that?”

Burt shook his head, now frowning himself. “He knew I was coming?”

Nancy nodded. “Harlow told me it wasn’t the first time _he’d_ seen it happen, he said Tyler always knows exactly where you are if you’re in the valley.”

“And El Blanco knew exactly where Tyler was.” Burt’s mind started to stir, shaking off some of the dragging weight of exhaustion and worry. “He’s always known exactly where Tyler was, and he attacks anything that tries to hurt him. 4-12, the Vegas killers, and now that flying thing. And now that I think about it, that tourist who got killed on the tour back when Tyler first got here…his report to Twitchell said the man had been yelling at him just before it happened.” He blinked again. “Something an animal might interpret as pre-attack behavior.”

“Something that animal _did_ interpret as pre-attack behavior,” Nancy qualified. “Tyler felt threatened because that tourist could hurt his business, but all El Blanco got was that the man was going to hurt Tyler and he responded instinctively to put a stop to it.” She sighed. “Burt, I want you to look at Tyler, concentrate on him, and think about how much you’d like him to wake up right now. If I’m right…”

Oh God, if she was right…Burt stood up and moved as close to the bed as he could get without actually being on it, taking his lover’s hand first in one of his own and then in both of them. He didn’t dare close his eyes to aid his concentration, but he thought just as hard as he could.

And Tyler’s eyelids flickered. Nancy had stood up and was watching too. A moan parted Tyler’s lips…and his eyes opened halfway, desperately tracking until they settled on Burt. “B…Bu…”

“Don’t try to talk, Tyler,” Burt soothed. He sat carefully on the side of the bed and stroked his lover’s stubbled cheek. “You’re going to be all right, but you’re pretty banged up. The less you move, the happier you’re going to be.”

Tyler swallowed with obvious effort and nodded. “I’ll get some water,” Nancy said, disappearing into the small bathroom and returning seconds later with a dripping washcloth which she used to carefully moisten dry lips. “I’ll get you a cup with a straw in a minute, okay?”

Burt took the cloth away from Nancy and held it himself, letting the water drip into Tyler’s mouth, and the next swallow appeared to be less painful. Tyler licked his lips. “What…”

“That monster attacked you, you’re in the hospital. But you’re going to be fine,” Burt assured him.

“M-monster?”

“El Blanco ate it.” Burt offered the cloth again, at the same time letting his thumb gently trace his lover’s lower lip. “He saved your life, ripped that thing right out of the sky.”

Tyler’s half-open eyes took on a faraway look and then slid shut, and he smiled. “Good worm.”

Burt wondered if somewhere out there El Blanco was feeling a warm touch of approval, and wriggling like a puppy being patted. He checked his watch, noting the time, and then returned his full attention to his lover. “Tyler, can you stay awake for me just a little longer?”

“Um hmm.” Blue eyes reopened, narrowing a little to focus on him. Tyler’s smile became a frown. “Burt…” He tried to lift his left arm, wincing, obviously wanting to touch his lover’s face. “Burt, you…”

Burt quickly pinned the arm back down. “Shhh, I’m all right,” he reassured the younger man. “But I told you not to move, you’ll hurt yourself.”

“Burt’s just tired,” Nancy chimed in, correctly understanding the look on Tyler’s face. “He’s been here since yesterday, waiting for you to wake up.”

“Y-yesterday?” Tyler blinked and frowned even more. “No sleep?” He read the answer in his lover’s face and shook his head, wincing again. “Need sleep, Burt.”

Burt stroked his cheek again, forcing a smile. “Now that I know you’ll be all right, I can get some,” he said.

Tyler snorted softly and rolled his eyes in Nancy’s direction. “N-nancy, make him?”

She laughed. “No one _makes_ Burt Gummer do anything. You should know that.”

Blue eyes swung back to Burt, deepening with something. Tyler didn’t laugh. “Please?”

Burt’s eyes widened; he hadn’t just heard that, he’d _felt_ it. Not a push, there was no compelling involved, just a warm caress inside his mind that conveyed loving concern. Tyler thought he looked tired, too tired, and Tyler wanted him to rest. Tyler also wasn’t going to be able to rest himself unless Burt did. The survivalist gave in at once. “I’ll go get some sleep as soon as you do,” he promised. “And you can go back to sleep as soon as the doctor has had a look at you.”

Tyler sighed and nodded. He blinked up at his lover again. “Can I have…a kiss, ‘fore he gets here?”

Nancy had never seen them kiss before, and seeing it now brought tears to her eyes. They’d come so close to losing Tyler, too close. He was so badly hurt, it would be months before he was back to normal and able to help Burt patrol the valley again – which meant that it would be months before Burt’s attention would be fully on Perfection either.

But the flying things were still out there, hunting in the darkness. And sometimes in broad daylight, too.


End file.
